Improving collaborative and Post-WIMP systems through requirements specification

Abstract

A proper requirements specification is paramount for achieving the quality of the developed software products. However, well-known Requirements Engineering (RE) techniques lack of enough expressiveness to model the requirements of CSCW systems (Computer Supported Collaborative Work). This is due to the inherent complexity of collaboration among users and their need of awareness. Moreover, the way in which users interact with CSCW systems have evolved greatly to more sophisticated interfaces, beyond the classical desktop computer environments, to those called Post-WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer). Awareness is magnified in such a way that users have to be aware of their context: the artifacts with which to interact, his/her own capabilities as well as those of the others. All this awareness is necessary to allow them to collaborate in virtual and/or augmented environments. This PhD thesis aims at solving this problem by developing a RE framework able to deal with the requirements of CSCW and Post-WIMP systems, making emphasis on the awareness requirements about user's context.